| so hey! does anyone actually read this anymore? i don't. not often, anyway. the tragedy is overwhelming.
anyway, as i speak to the void, i may as well tell it what an amaaaazing summer this has been so far. well, at least in the last week or so, let's put it that way.
laaaast...sunday? yeah, sunday, not this last sunday but the sunday before, i rose to greet the dawn...or...well, witching hour, technically, it was three in the morning...and my entire family (that means me, too) lunged into the van and made our way to missouri. well...not lunged. a lunge was attempted and failed. needless to say, i dropped my brain (again) on the floor of the garage and had to deep clean it before restoring it to its home in my cranium.
after a loooooong drive and the special entry of four starbucks doubleshots into the life of Claire, the gold astrovan going by the name of 'Chewbacca' pulled into the driveway of the much loved and missed Howell family.
i swear that visit was so much fun. even the bugs eating me alive and the insane humidity paled in comparison to the crrrrrazy fun we had. it was even better than doing something illegal. the first day (evening? night?) was spent kind of getting used to seeing each other again after four or five years of not seeing-ness. all of the guys were taller, all of the girls more mature and less giggly, the moms looking...smaller than i remembered. older. more tired.
we rose up and called them awesome.
anyway, the second day was the only real full day we had with all four families - Primozics, Howells, Noes, and Ilers together...at LAST! it was amazing. and hot. and oh my asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk THE MOSQUITOES!
i did NOT start that waterfight. i merely approached the hot sweaty teens on the trampoline and splashed ONE of them (ONE!) with a small dixie cup of cold water. a dixie cup, people. think small. like, really small. like, lilliputian. of course, then they ASKED (really asked, with words) for me to splash them some MORE because they were so hhhoooooottt, so i returned to the house, obtained a modest-sized hawaiian punch jug, filled it with more cold water, trudged outside into the oppressive saharan heat, and dumped accordingly.
i did not start that waterfight.
eventually, every single kid was soaked through with ice cold water, and the moms decided it looked like fun, so soon they were rather moist, but not really soaked, and everyone was exhausted, but hey, who cares, so we decided to take a walk down the train tracks until dinner. which was interesting and kind of cool, but we only had about half an hour, so we didn't go far. we came back and ate stuff (i don't remember what we had) and were eaten more by bugs and then we played the cup game until we had BLISTERS on our fingers. BLISTERS. next time, ben and helen are going dowwwwwwn. i kid you not.
the Noes had to leave tuesday morning, which was a shakespearian tragedy in the works, so we didn't have much time, but we didn't have much to do, either. i swear about half the time we had was taken up in,
"well, what should we do?"
"there's nothing TO do."
"we have to think of SOMETHING."
"this is stupid."
"how much time do we have left?"
"like, none."
"so what should we do?"
finally...the inevitable conclusion.
"let's jump off the roof onto that red squishy thing!"
"yyyeeeeeaaaah!"
so seventeen kids tramp out to the shed to get the red squishy thing (which seemed sooooo muge huger when we were what...seven?) and position it under the roof of the garage. a ladder is set up. kids climb. kids jump.
i, fearing the wrath of four coffee-drinking moms, choose to take pictures and steer clear of the actual neck-breaking process. ben agrees with me. smart man. so we jump on the trampoline and take random pictures while the rest of the crew jumps off the roof and try to convince the poor little kids to do the same. ahhhh. on with brainwashing.
the moms come out.
everyone stops talking.
and jumping.
and laughing.
and screaming.
then, the moment of truth.
Mrs. Iler: "hey caleb, SMILE!"
*shutter clicks*
everyone starts talking.
and jumping.
and laughing.
and screaming.
again.
Mrs. Iler becomes a trendsetter and soon all the moms are taking pictures and laughing and looking concerned out of the corners of their eyes as they see their innocent young being led up the Ladder of Doom.
but soon the dangerous amusement came to an end. it was time for the Noes to leave. hearts broke. tears flowed. macho pictures were taken of the men. charlie's angels pictures were taken of the girls. hugs were given. life ceased for a few crystal moments as the car was backed out of the perilous driveway and a tree was brought down in the process.
we regrouped eventually. i went off by myself to listen to my iPod and write in my journal in comparitive privacy on the porch of the schoolhouse, and gradually meandered over to the trampoline, from which disembodied, bored voices could be heard. i now know from experience that having 'Glamorous' by Fergie blasting in your ears while your eyes rest briefly on people like caleb howell and grant iler is the most incongruous and disturbing experience known to man.
while the moms strolled down to the mailbox to pick up (surprise!) mail, the kids all speculated as to what they were REAAAAALLY doing that was taking them so long.
one of the guys: "i'll bet they've got tequila stashed in the mailbox."
"yyyeeeeeaaaah, and they're partying without us."
"yeah. maaaan, what's taking them so long...we wanna go swimming already."
"oh here they come. i can hear them already."
"yup. tequila."
the moms approached the trampoline, smiling and giggling. the kids exchanged wary glances.
"we met up with the mailman!"
"sorry it took us so long...we kind of had to say hi."
the kids exchanged more glances, this times ones that said,
"uhuh. the mailman. suuuuuuure."
after much pow-wowing, it was decided that everyone would go to the caves not far down the road, spelunk, and then go swimming, after which pizza would be obtained and everyone would watch karate tapes.
the caves were the funnerest thing of alllll tiiiiime. i went into this tiny hole following grant, josh, and caleb, wowing the guys in the process.
caleb: "claire, i am seriously impressed."
grant: "yeah."
caleb: "you're like the first girl we've gotten to come down here."
me: "ha. yeah. i wonder why."
we went about...i wanna say ten yards or so down this tiny craggy tunnel until we reached a turn-around point, where we all (amazingly) turned around. i was scratched and muddy and soggy and cramped and ecstatic.
we finally struggled out of the tiny tunnel, a la Shelob or Birth of the Uruk-Hai, and those not brave enough to face the overwhelming muddy darkness laughed at us. all hail the conquering heroes, right? so then caleb iler wrote 'hi' on my back in mud and i didn't even care. it was kind of a weird experience. everyone kept looking at me all odd-like and saying "hi back!" and then cracking up like some ground-breaking belly-aching joke had been born.
but we weren't done. the bigger kids then helped the littler kids to return to the loving concerned arms of their respective mothers before turning to darker entertainments. not far into the caves (as in, within eyeshot of aforementioned mothers), there was a vertical shaft of sorts, starting in a room about seven feet above the floor of the cave and ending about ten above that in another room looking out over the main room where all of the smaller (or less muddily inclined) kids were sitting eating oreos. grant, caleb h., helen, me, and josh h. decided to climb up. the first challenge was getting to the first (tiny, cramped, oxygen-deprived, soggy, amazing) room. this involved scrambling up a foothold-vacant wall that was only inches (okay, maybe not inches...feet?) from a sheer drop into the rest of the cave. grant went first, then caleb. i'm pretty sure helen went next. no wait. first grant, then helen went. right, and then caleb. helen was too short to get up without help. ha. how strange that i forgot. anyway, once those three were in the first room, there was no room for a third person, so i waited (and shared commentary with grant on a pointless two-by-four sitting innocuously in a random corner of the room) while caleb made his way up to the top of the shaft and was in the second room. with the help of josh's knee and grant's hand, i made it up to the first room and stood, waiting, trembling in anticipation for my turn as lethal specks of mud shot at me from the flailing soles of helen's shoes, dangling what seemed like a hundred feet in the air, searching frantically for a foothold. much stifled laughter and a few broken ribs later and helen was up in the second room, looking down and laughing at me.
such brevity was not to be tolerated. not in a time of such epic excitement and or peril. as the music swelled around us, i grabbed my first handhold. grabbed - lunged -
...
missed.
fell.
broke my over-aspiring heart on the craggy floor of the first room.
luckily for me, grant had stayed behind to help in just such a situation. good man. i climbed onto his knee (grant, i don't care what you say, i know it must have been dislocated, you're just being staunch) and, with the help of caleb and his now-fractured hand, reached the second room. ahhh. let us all have a moment of silence as we admire the lewis-and-clark-esque exploits of such daring adventurers.
allright. the music can swell again.
scrambling up like a ninja on red bull, grant reached the top room. we looked around. oohed. aahed. (although for the guys, it was more like "dude. sweet.").
we peered out the opening at the masses yearning to climb free. waved. were shouted at. at my jesting prompt (as in, i shouted "I'M READY FOR MY CLOSEUP, MR. DEMILL!"), cameras were produced and a photo-op became the order of business.
soon, however, we grew bored with the public life and the red carpet scene and decided to go back down the shaft. the oreos were looking really really yummy at that point and were vanishing rapidly. the time had come.
caleb went down first.
helen was going to go next, but it was quickly discovered that it would be impossible for her to descend into the abyss without some kind of harness, thanks to the length of her legs slash arms (or lack thereof). after much experimenting with a nylon cord, a two-by-four (not really, but kind of), and "petrified crap" (you had to be there), a harness was fashioned. while grant and helen were getting scientific with this construction, i descended without the aid of a rope and nearly killed poor caleb in the process. i'm sure he's scarred for life. he's just being staunch.
finally, after many comments by those on the ground on the generous length of my legs ("dude. your legs are long. like an alien's. kind of. i mean...") and the cute shortness of those belonging to helen, ("she needed a HARNESS?") we returned to the main cave, only to find that the oreos had been consumed by the ragingly hungry onlookers.
we went home.
showers were taken.
muddy clothes were washed.
some of the kids went to shoot guns.
some of the kids played the cup game.
then everyone went swimming.
the pool wasn't very full, so we had a lot of room to work with. first we did weird stuff on the diving board, making Stoned Lifeguard #1 laugh. of course he tried not to, but caleb iler doing the "fat man dive" proved to be too much, even for someone who was ON SOMETHING, if you know what i mean.
this grew tiresome after a while. after all, for kids whose only recourse from boredom is jumping off a roof, diving bizarrely only satisfies for so long.
we decided, then, to take advantage of lifeguards at large. at least play with them a little.
the lifeguards seemed to rotate every ten or fifteen minutes. there were only three, one on duty at a time, two blonde, one brunette, two stoned, one surly.
we congregated in the shallow end of the pool facing the lifeguard's chair and decided, in a rare moment of true inspiration, to link arms in one long line and simply stare at the lifeguard to gauge reaction. kind of like a science experiment. only totally different.
simply staring at a lifeguard who is stoned doesn't really have much effect, for those who wish to try this at home. so it was decided that we move forward slooooowwwwly, closer to the lifeguard, still staring (if you stared without blinking, you were considered Hardcore). the rule was that if the lifeguard looked in our direction (as they soon learned was a bad idea), we would stop in our respective tracks until he looked away again, and then continue in our journey towards the chair.
at this, the lifeguards seemed to have a harder time keeping straight faces.
we played with the original concept. once, we tried chanting that thing from 'Finding Nemo' (when he's being initiated and all of the fish go "ah oh ah ee ah oh oh oh"), all the while moving forward and staring, as one, at the high and confused pool employee. this made them laugh, but not a lot, so we toyed further. finally, we came to the conclusion that our stares had to be paired with ominous scowls to have the most powerful effect. (remembering grant's and caleb's faces will never cease to crack me up. see? i'm CRYING...)
at this point, the lifeguards just couldn't deal and ended up laughing in our faces.
ahhh.
the cleverness of us.
we left when kidane threw up in the pool (poor kid!) and the lifeguards stood around looking confused. pizza was obtained.
we ate it.
all of it. (okay. there was one pizza left over. but hey. midnight snacks are totally phat.)
it was so. good.
the next morning, the Primozic tribe left for Dallas. it was another heartrending occasion.
more tears were shed.
more pictures were taken.
more hugs were given.
another tree breathed its last.
as we drove away into the distance, as the music swelled, we heard the voices of the guys behind us...
"hey, let's jump on the back of the van!"
so they did. from my seat in the back of the vehicle, i could look out the back window and my eyes were met with the touching sight of three t-shirts billowing in the wind - six arms clinging desperately to anything they could find - and through the rear-view mirror i could catch a glimpse of hair flowing freely in the violent breeze, cheeks being pulled back from teeth and flapping in the same heartwarming breath of wind.
mom, having a disturbing streak of her own, decided to throw some (more) danger into the mix and braked sporadically. instead of screams, we could hear -
"whoooooa!"
"duuuuude!"
"niiiiiiice"
but too soon our mirth was cut short - arms tired from waterfights and spelunking and swimming could no longer cling to obscure fixtures...faces strained from laughing for hours on end could no longer endure the now-vicious winds...and as we drove away, three tired friends waved a weary last goodbye to us, and as the dust settled, they were gone.
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